Savage in Tendency

Just finished US Special Forces and CIA covert operative Billy Waugh’s biography called “Hunting the Jackal”.  The book was published in 2004 and much has transpired in the past 18 years.  For instance in the book Waugh tells us he believes Usama Bin Laden (UBL) was turned into  DNA in the caves of  Tora Bora.  We now know that the cockroach didn’t die that early but was later exterminated by special forces with a bullet to the head in Pakistan in May 2011.  The other thing is that we have withdrawn from Afghanistan, that I’m sure, breaks Billy Waugh’s heart.  Of course the Russians are on the offensive in Ukraine, getting their butts kicked.  We’ve just come through COVID.  Sadly, as I write this on New Year’s Eve, 2022, I just finished my first run-in with COVID.  Yeah…a lot of travel the past month, and for me, thinking my protocol has been sound, I succumbed.  I’ve been boosted 3 times.  Will we ever know what really works?  

Waugh quotes Orwell at the start of the book,   “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf”.  (Not actually Orwell but it’s not  clear who said it…but it’s correct regardless)  This cannot be any more true than in the life of this rogue warrior named Billy Waugh. Not to steal credit from the title of Dick Marcinko’s book about Navy Seals but by that name all our special forces are warrior’s and by definition rogue.  I’m using the definition of rogue to mean savage or destructive in tendency.  Which is exactly the mission we have in mind for these forces. Another definition of rogue is “unprincipled”. This however is the antithesis of Waugh’s work.  When it comes to executing violence on those who would do us (The Country) harm, Waugh is the furthest it would seem from unprincipled. 

The other thing that has recently occurred is that Argentina just won the World Cup.  A December World Cup, one to be remembered.   I only mention that because in one of the book reviews I just read about this Billy Waugh the reader refers to him as the Greatest of All Time or GOAT as it pertains to special forces fighting men.  

To be the GOAT you have to be literally the Greatest of All Time.  The greatest soccer player of all time, just led Argentina to victory.  Lionel Messi.  Not Diego Maradona, the other Argentine  who once could lay claim to being the GOAT.  Pele in Brazil (RIP Pele), or Ronaldo from Portugal. But the facts as they stand, Messi is not the current GOAT as he just lived out his destiny  to become the GOAT.  To which all others will be judged.  Can we determine if Billy Waugh is the GOAT of special forces?  It’s not an easy task.  

Can there be a GOAT in this category of warfighting men (or women)?  There are so many heroes out there.  Is there even a category?   Audey Murphy springs to mind as the most decorated American Soldier of all time.  Surely he was the GOAT of something.  Other warfighters who they write books about should be examined in this category.  The Russian sniper Vasily Zaytsev played by Jude Law in the movie “Enemy at the Gate” has over 242 confirmed kills.  The American sniper, Chris Kyle, played by Bradley Cooper in the movie “American Sniper” had 80 confirmed kills.  Just getting Bradley Cooper to play you, might make you the GOAT, although Jude Law put in a strong performance.

Another testosterone laden category of warfighting men is that of fighter pilots.  German Ace’s tend to dominate the skies with Manfred von Richthofen aka “The Red Baron” tallying 80 aerial kills in WWI.  However another German Ace, Erich Hartmann, shot down 300 of his adversaries aircraft in WWII, making him the GOAT of the skies. Nobody even comes close to Hartmann.   In the US we tend to hero worship ACEs such as Richard Bong with 40 kills in Korea and of Course Robin Olds, an American ace in three different wars, which is interesting to be sure.  Olds is memorialized every year in the USAF during March where airmen try to outdo one another by growing the most outlandish Robin Olds Mustache.

Without proper criteria it’s hard to argue Billy Waugh is the GOAT.  He would need that World Cup trophy.  He would have needed UBLs head on a pike as his supervisor at the CIA, Coffer Black,  described to him the mission at hand just before he went to Afghanistan.  The fact that Billy Waugh was on the ground in Afghanistan, with the CIA, at age 71 certainly puts him in a unique, if not GOAT like category.  Had he actually returned to Cofer Black with UBL’s head, on a pike, or in a box, I certainly would have said yes, to GOAT..  That would have fulfilled his destiny and come full-circle from those moments on the ground in Khartoum, Sudan in Africa   where Waugh had multiple opportunities in the early 90’s to personally end UBL’s life.  That was reported as real in Ric Prado’s book, Black Ops.  That would have made a fine movie had we come full circle.  We did not.  But what else distinguishes his career from other mere mortals where we can find the ground to elevate Waugh into GOAT territory.  We need heroes of this caliber.   

Waugh’s first principle,  rough men who stand ready so we can sleep at night.

This is both a true statement and a necessary condition of peace.  Those who don’t have the stomach to consider the necessity of violence, or the threat of violence do not live in the real world and do not understand a thing beyond their own personal comfort. I don’t say that lightly.  Homosapiens suck as a species.  Left to our own devices we will never stop finding reasons to kill one another.  Only sane and well considered members of our society will find ways  to reason and make laws by which we can peacefully coexist.  But then we must also have the manner in which humans are governed to include law enforcement internal to one's state and a military, to defend against aggression from abroad (and within as we’ve recently discovered). 

So let’s consider what Billy Waugh tells us about his life in this biography. This is a brief synopsis, read his book to hear it in his words and his war stories which are fascinating and I wish I was in a bar with him, hearing of the exploits first hand.  

Waugh started in the Army in 1948 and went to Airborne School before going to Korea.  After Korea Shortly after the end of the Korean War, he trained with Special Forces and was assigned duties in Germany. He deployed to Southeast Asia and began doing counter insurgency against the North Vietnamese in places not on the map, like Laos.  He was injured multiple times, the most significant being awarded this 6th Purple Heart for action under fire during the battle of Bong Son. Serving until 1972 in Vietnam he was a Command Sergeant Major before retiring from the Army.  He began contract work for the CIA through Edwin Wilson (Ed Wilson’s War) in Libya, perhaps providing camera footage arguably later instrumental in Operation Eldorado Canyon. In the 80’s he worked as a security cop out at Kwajalein Missile Range in the Pacific to disrupt Russian agents/military attempting to collect intel on our long range missile testing.

In the 90’s he again worked for the CIA in  Khartoum, Sudan where he found and kept under surveillance “the Jackal”  for which his book is named. And he also kept a close watch on Osama bin Laden.  Sadly not putting that dog down and saving the world from that scourge and several decades of GWOT.  Then of course his historic Post 9/11 entry into Afghanistan as an advisor at the age of 71. (Gary Schroen - “First In” although Schoen does not mention Waugh by name his presence there is indisputable).

So, summing up.  Huge American. Highly decorated.  Savage in tendency.  All the right principles. A legend. A motivator.  A leader. I’m glad we have American’s like Billy Waugh giving their all for our Country.  But Billy Waugh as the Special Forces and Covert Operative GOAT?  Probably not.  But exactly one of the roughmen (or women) we need on the frontline protecting us as we sleep.  Four-stars for Billy Waugh putting all his war stories in one place for us to relish.

My Life with Dyslexia

I want to tell you a story…   it won’t be about my fear of flying this time.  For the most part, constant air travel has cured me of that phobia.  It’s about something else that has plagued me my entire life, but went undiagnosed until I turned 50.   A true disability, from which, I adapted, like a three-legged dog, and never knew I was disabled.  I don’t know if this is a success story or some other commentary on the political landscape we created when we started holding ceremonies for our kids graduating from kindergarten…giving each one a trophy.   I do remember, in New Jersey, on or about 1974, my soccer team came in second place in the League.   Satisfied with the team’s performance, our coaches took us out for pizza and gave each one of us a second-place trophy. I cherished that trophy.  It stills sit’s in my office today. It didn’t make me soft. It made me proud.  And with pride, and confidence, much like any four-legged dog, I moved through life wagging my tail and compensating for the things I lacked without realizing I was even a dog, let alone with three legs.

From a very early beginning I was detrayed by my words.  My mom always told me I couldn’t spell because I learned phonetically in public school and the failure of phonics must have been the reason I sucked at spelling.  She had one data point.  How could a smart kid like me not be able to spell?  It plagued her for her entire life.   It must have been the phonetic spelling lessons she reasoned countless times when I asked her how a word was spelled.   Imagine one day early in my life, while trying to spell the word detrayal, I realized it was actually spelled with a ‘b”.  Well, I felt betrayed by the system.  How could I have missed that one so badly?  Sure, they knew about dyslexia back in the 70’s.  I even remember my best friend David’s mother, Mrs. Simms, explaining to me that if you had dyslexia, you would flip your “S’s” backward.  From then and there I was on the lookout for the telltale sign of the flipped S.   As it turns out, to a dyslexic, a flipped “S” is the absolute least of your problems.   A flipped “b” and a “d” on the other hand, robs you of your innocence.  Let’s not even talk about a flipped “p” and a “q” because that’s just mean.

So, with that very first betrayal of the school system going off fully undiagnosed, I launched into my mediocre school life never quite understanding I had a issue, or is it a problem?  Fast forward another 40 years. Successful completion of high school, college, a BS in Engineering, a Master’s in Liberal Arts, and a Second Master’s in Operations Research.  I was an officer in the USAF.  A system’s engineer at a large corporation.   I ran my own business and also became a federal civilian for a number of years.  And now in my twilight years, I’m still a high functioning dyslexic with abysmal hand-writing skills.  And I still can’t spell for shit.  How did I discover, finally, about my disability?

Let’s talk about something that is a flaw in my character.  I never wanted my daughter to fail.  She struggles in math.  I’ve written extensively on what I believed to be the root cause of her math failures…her 6th grade math teacher…who called all of her students, young mathematicians.   I called her Bloody Mary for the way she forced my daughter out of STEM.  If you want more of that story you can read about it here, “Blood Mary and the Paradox of 6th Grade Math Teachers”.  My daughter had to successfully complete some math to graduate high school.   Maybe, and I’m not confirming or denying this part, her dad helped her with her math homework.  Perhaps he actually completed some, or all, of her math homework.  When this caring father, we will call him dad, completed his own work in school, he never checked his math.  He’s kind of confident dude, bold, gusting to arrogant on most occasions.  But he never checked his math.  Why would he check his math?  It’s right!  The math is right!  That’s probably a longer story…and as it turns out…the very subject of this essay.  But because Dad was completing the math work for his daughter, he felt that if he was doing someone else’s work, and turning it in for a grade, he ought to check the math.  Imagine, for the first time in his life, checking his math and finding some of it wrong.  WTF?  How did he make that mistake.  He flipped a 25 and a 52.  That’s a rookie error, not a disability.  Imagine, however, after a semester of math, and checking his own homework over and over again, for the very first time, finding many similar errors.   Not a lot of errors, but a sufficient number of errors to turn an “A” homework into a “C” homework.   A passing grade.  Had there been sufficient errors to turn his “A” homework assignments in school into failing grades, perhaps Dad wouldn’t have a story to tell.  He would have known.  As it turns out, his disability slipped through the cracks.  A passing grade.  Two-O and go.  As they say.  He stayed on the edge.  It was seemingly more than enough to get by.  But it was a mediocre, at best, getting by.

But now, at age 50, it caught his attention big time.  Also, he had just changed career paths.  Moving from management, into program support, that required relearning a bunch of math.  And, not just relearning math, working in computer programming with lower lever machine language, verse higher level languages.  It would be hard enough, for a dyslectic to write code…but perhaps no harder than writing, and perhaps easier because a complier will find errors caused by misspelled variables, for instance.  A built-in editor.  But now I was working in hexadecimal and binary.  One of the first things you learn when working with hexadecimal and binary in a computer architecture is the endianness of the processor.  Since in a computer architecture, it’s arbitrary, which end of a circuit is on the left or right, the original designer can choose which side to start the significant bit of an 8-bit word when they stuff it into a memory circuit.  Can anyone see why this might be a problem for someone who flips letters and numbers?  Safe to say I’ll never quit my day job to design computer architectures.

So, looking at a lot of hexadecimal code became incredibly laborious. It was hard to tell left from right.  I just thought it was hard, or my vision was failing.  It had not quite dawned on me yet that I had a problem.  However, other clues began surfacing.  Particularly when you start researching the symptoms of dyslexia.

• Poor spelling

• Left and right confusion

• Messy handwriting

• Trouble reading unfamiliar words, often making wild guesses 

• Pauses, hesitates, and/or uses lots of “um’s” when speaking

• Mispronunciation of long, unfamiliar or complicated words

• Trouble remembering dates, names, telephone numbers, random lists

• Extreme difficulty learning a foreign language

• Avoids saying words that might be mispronounced

• Struggles to retrieve words; frequently has “It was on the tip of my tongue” moments

Oh wow! The story of my life begins to unfold.   I don’t just have messy handwriting because I’m lazy.  I don’t just have trouble mispronouncing words out loud because I’m illiterate. My brain simply flips the details at a lower level and decides to compensate in unusual ways.  When I read, for instance, I’m just going to see the word, not the letters.  That’s why it’s hard to pronounce words.  I know what they mean but forget about me trying to read it out loud, particularly if I have to pronounce it.  My mom thought it was the phonics simply because I couldn’t pronounce words, so the phonics didn’t teach me so the phonics must suck.  No, I can’t pronounce words because I don’t know if its pronounced “de-trayed” or “be-trayed”.  That’s a big difference and an embarrassment to a kid because one of those words doesn’t actually exist in the English language.

Then it turns out I began giving a lot of white board lectures at work.  More than a lot…I’m probably giving several three-hour lectures a week at work-- all with just a white board and markers.  Turns out I have to spell words in public.  Not just words… I have to use a lot of letters and symbols as well.  Spelling words, by writing them, in real time, in public, is agonizing.  And I can watch it develop in real time.  I can watch, almost apart from my body, as I begin to write the same word I have written, hundreds of times, in front of me, with the wrong order of the letters.  How do I compensate?  I write quickly and as messy as I can. And I keep talking.  Keep the lecture going, maybe no one noticed.   It’s not clear anyone has detected my disability yet.  They probably just think I sloppy AF.  But that’s ok…if they understand what I am teaching them…and most of them do.

I still don’t know how I hopped through life as a three-legged dog.  But I did.  Perhaps my dyslexia is not as profound as others, but clearly, I’m on the spectrum, if that’s a thing.  Now that I’m paying attention to it, I find even more things I do wrong…flipping letters and symbols, not just left/right but also up/down.  When I look at a phone number, I stare at it for a few seconds.  If I stare long enough at the numbers, I know they will be playing tricks on me.  So, I wait, to see if they jump.  And then I wait some more.   They are tricky bastards.  But I’ve stopped letting them fool me.  I don’t know if I would have gotten better math grades in school, had I known, but I do now, I finally check my math. And, when I'm making a right turn at a cross street with a sign posted for a "No Left Turn", I sit and wait, like a pig, staring at a wristwatch, for the confusion in my brain to settle. And then I hop on three legs, blissfully into the intersection, with my tail wagging, to make my right-hand turn...

Doggo

Anyone with basic observation skills who has ever had the pleasure of a dog's company, may have asked themselves the question, why is this animal so happy? It’s always wagging its tail! Dogs, in general, are the most resilient of creatures and have, in my humble opinion, unlocked the secret to a happy life. No matter the circumstance, a dog will undoubtedly find a way to wag it's tail. They just love life. They just seem to want to live their best life, despite the circumstances. Saving you the trouble of reading this entire blog, here then, right up front, is a dog's secret to a happy life. First, adapt to what you have, second, love unconditionally, live in the moment, and finally, sleep when you are tired, eat when you are hungry...that's it!

I’ve had the pleasure of a dog's company for a good portion of my life. Fearing the death of my first dog, the family dog, I would project 10 years into the future, knowing her life wouldn't last but a decade or slightly more. I prayed that I would be away from home when it came time for her to go to heaven. Later I would discover that this approach, foreseeing the future, and working through the future scenarios of this unpleasantness, is one of the key principles of stoicism. We are told by the experts that dogs can’t really do such mental gymnastics because they are not self aware. They can’t even see themselves in the mirror (recently disputed in several studies). It is also clear that none of my dogs have opened and read Marcus Aurelius “The Meditations".  So I am going to have to rule out Stoicism as a secret to their happiness. Yet somehow they don’t react to the emotional roller coaster of life. They are resilient to these ups and downs.

Dogs are very keen observers of their environment. Through their eyes, ears, and nose they paint a full multidimensional view of the world around them. They have as close to perfect “total awareness” of this world without the help of the meditative skills given to us by Zen Buddhists for entering the mind known as Satori or total awareness. I have also not observed my dog sitting in the lotus position, so it’s probably safe to say my dog’s have not been Zen Masters. Yet they sleep when they are tired, they eat when they are hungry. That’s a perfect life. They are resilient to sensory deprivation through their awareness. If denied one sense, they compensate with another. Seamlessly, as if they are not even aware the other is missing.

As we watch our dogs age they are incredibly adaptable. A dog named Lucky, a three legged dog, or the one eyed dog, are not just clichés for a reason. There are many dogs named Lucky. And it’s possible to have all three in the same package, a three legged, one eyed dog, named Lucky. I would love Lucky. Most of my dog lover friends would too. And you can bet Lucky would love to have his head scratched or his belly rubbed and be wagging her tail the whole time. Yet to endure this fate and the natural degradation of growing old I have never observed my dog dressing in her Sunday best, and heading out to Church on Easter. In fact I’ve never observed my dog praying at dinner time or reading the Bible for that matter. I can safely say my Dog is not a Christian in any sense of the word. I don’t know if all dogs go to heaven, but since I know my dog’ is not going to hell, I can only assume she's going to the better place...wherever that may be...and without the salvation of her soul. I believe animals are without sin...unlike other's who project their own sin's onto the actions of dogs.

Yet undeniably, a dog is a human’s best friend. A best friend without all the hang-ups of any human’s human best friend. Even the best of all our human friends come with baggage. Maybe rarely, but still, even the best of our human friends will have a bad day. A death in the family. A sick child. A major shift in their life. It is at those times when your friendship with them will be more important than their friendship with you. Yet still, the dog is there. Undeterred in their resolve by the sad news they wag their tail and it makes us smile.

So without the emotional maturity of Marcus Aurelius, the keen awareness of a Zen Master, or the selflessness of Christ Jesus, how did dogs become our best friend?

Our current dog is living out the remainder of her geriatric years, and is still a source of great love. Selfless, unbounded, universal Love. Not Eros, not Phila, nor Agape, dogs simply possess the ability to love without conditions. A dog holds no judgment. They don’t know what you were doing, what you were thinking, or what you were saying. They don’t condemn you for being a conservative or a liberal. I promise you it wasn’t me who trained our dog to bark at MAGA red or Marxist blue. She just knew. (that’s a joke)

Our dog is now a Centurion, in dog-years. Over the age of 15 she is now 105 in dog-years. She may be older but she still wags her tail when we enter the room. Although she can no longer see that well. And, she is stone cold deaf having lost all of her hearing sometime ago. We didn’t go to the audiologist so she doesn’t really understand that she would be losing her hearing…and to prepare for this disability. She actually doesn’t behave as if she has a disability. She just doesn’t bark at the mailman when she hears him on the porch. Rather, she sleeps at the door with her nose tucked up in the crack, and every once in a while, when she gets the timing right, she can feel his footsteps on the front porch and greets him with great exuberance…and a wagging tail....  Dog on a porch, wagging it's tail.  That's the meaning of life.  If you've every read the book, Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl’s classic book, I have reduced the tenets of Logo Therapy to being present.  Paying attention in those moments of connection.  Dog's pay attention in those moments of attention.  They demand it.  Even if they are just brining you a ball.  They are present, they are in the moment.  For more on Logo Therapy read my review of Frankl's book (Squirrel on a Branch Eating a Nut).

Because she is deaf, she isn’t that great judging when I am walking behind her, she turns her whole body to look, to make sure I am still there.  This proves comical, because every once in awhile she will turn suddenly, and  not being as agile as I use to be, it feels like she is about to sweep my legs, in a Karate Kid style take down. She also sleeps 28 hours a day. Reserving those last few minutes of her life for us as best she can. Even though she can't hear or see that well she can still smell. Her olfactory senses still seem as keen as ever. She doesn’t hear me putting her food in the bowl…so she’s not right there with me.  But when, at the speed of smell, the meaty aroma makes it to the living room, she lifts her head, breaths in the air, and decides if she is hungry. If she’s hungry, she awakens fully, slowly stands, and makes her way into the kitchen, wagging her tail along the way…she is present.

To Our Wives and Our Girl Friends, May They Never Meet...

Big news recently in the world of geographic exploration—the Endurance, famed sailing ship of Sir Earnest Shackleton, was found amazingly preserved laying 10,000 feet below the ice flows of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica.  At the time of her loss, 1915, she had been frozen in the ice for over 10 months and had drifted in that icy embrace for hundreds of miles before being crushed, broken, and lost beneath the surface of the solid sea. Forced to abandon ship and flee onto the ice flow, all 28 members of her crew survived the tell the tale.  The 75 sled dogs they brought with them…not so much.  This recent discovery, however, has motivated yet another wave of interest in what transpired on that ill-fated expedition.  Perhaps the greatest story of endurance and resilience ever told.

Think of them and their resilience when you get trapped in a hail storm with your family on a springtime day in the park. Think of them as you wake up in the morning after a nice eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Think of them as you adjust your thermostat from 68° to a balmy 70° to take the chill out of the morning air.  Think of them as you enjoy your warm breakfast with eggs-over-easy, crispy bacon, with melted butter on soft toast.  Think of them when you take a warm shower and get dressed in clean clothes. Think of them--the explorers of the Endurance--trapped in the ice flows of an Antarctic winter having to endure the extreme deprivation found only in fictional stories—and remember—the story of the Endurance is anything but fiction.

It's hard to count the number of stories that have emerged during the retelling of this true-life adventure over the last 106 years.   One story, told in 1959 by the American journalist, Alfred Lansing, stands out as the very best. The book he wrote—Endurance—would become the definitive text on deprivation, survival, a stiff upper lip, leadership, team work, and of course resilience.  As with many retellings of this story, Shackleton, the leader of the expedition seemingly takes center stage.  As a seasoned and already famous Antarctic explorer looking to make an even bigger name for himself, so he could stand toe-to-toe with the other great South Pole explorers, Amundsen and Scott—he does seem to reach his goal.  The theme of the Shackleton legend has been, “For scientific discovery, give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when you are seeing no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton”. Yet this book, by Lansing, is called Endurance, for another reason beyond the obvious.  Yes, the ship is called Endurance, but for me, in Lansing’s mind, the word endurance is a tribute to the tale of the resilience in all of these men.  All of them.  Not just Shackleton. Just read it and you will understand why. 

What Lansing has done, through his writing, defies belief.  If this were a book of fiction, one would certainly be convinced, he made it all up.  No one can endure, let alone, survive these conditions—both bone-crushingly brutal and mind-numbingly boring at the same time.   But yet it is all true.  Painstakingly researched with the availability of the men’s journals, multiple interviews with them (as they were much older but still alive in the 50’s) as well as many photographs and drawings.  Every hour on the ice-pack and so much more.  Why are there photographs, you might ask?  As mentioned, Shackleton was quite proud of himself.  He definitely fancied himself a star. He certainly knew that taking pictures of his attempt at walking across Antarctica would come in handy for the publicity and lucrative nature of multiple speaking engagements upon his return.  He brought with him both a photographer and an artist…he also brought a poet.  In the darkest days of their survival, when they abandoned much of their equipment and were forced by necessity to destroy all of their sledge dogs, Shackleton allowed them to keep their personal journals. Somehow the photos, or at least the film made it back.  Strangely, multiple sextants for navigation, were lost.  The only remaining sextant, hung around Frank Worsley’s neck.  Worsley was the actual captain of the ship Endurance.  Shackleton was the leader of the expedition.  Shackleton hired Worsley to be the captain.  It was an excellent choice as some historians believe it was Worsley who is the true hero of this saga. But I digress, as compelling and nuanced as the adventure can be to tell to everyone, this is a review of the book not the adventure. 

With so much at his disposal, Lansing has done, what any really good writer would do.  He’s has written.  Not having to invent content, he was free to take the research material, think and rethink the conditions, timeline, the multiple stories of each man, with their perspectives, and in some cases, exactly what they were thinking—because he had their written journals with notes sometimes down to the hour of the day—and weave everything together in a fluid, seamless narrative, that has you believing you are along for the expedition.  Along with very bump, every sound, ever pain, every taste, and every hidden fear in their minds.

You feel the cold and dampness all around you.  You smell the smoke from the burning seal blubber in their stoves. You hear Endurance moan under the crushing grip of the ice. You taste the fatty and bloody seal meat. At one point sledge dog--a delicacy given what they were used to with their rationed diet including penguin. You sense the relentless boredom and creeping fear as days become weeks and weeks become months.  When the Antarctic winter fades completely into darkness and blizzards blow with gale force winds across a cracked and unstable ice pack—merely a 10 ft plate of flowing of living ice floating above the abyss of a 10,000 ft deep, dark, sea.  Ten months they lived on the ice pack moving with the currents and winds for several hundred miles, with Worsley pin pointing their position with incredible accuracy.  Lansing has you feel it all.  Including the arguments of the men, their frustrations, their hopefulness and hopelessness, and the retched nature of Shackleton’s decision to destroy their beloved animal workers and companions, all the dogs, and one lovely ship cat.  Over and over again, Lansing has you feel the repetitive nature of their routine.  Most of us would go insane.  Most of us would give up.  Most of us would die.  I died at least three times during this story.  Somehow, the men were driven to keep trying, and Lansing has you keep reading.  It’s a page turner.  I could not escape from its grasp.  The plight of the men remained with me through out each day, until I returned to read in the warmth of my bed.  I used a flash light to read at night and imagined, in the depth of the Antarctic winter without sunlight, how these men continued to read the few books that they had salvaged. They kept going so Lansing kept writing.  Had they all died early there would be nothing more to write about—but they did not.  Thus, beyond their 10 months of floating on the ice, there are the truly fearful days they spent in small life boats on open and fearful sea trying to make it to Elephant Island. As well as the months of lost hope for the 22 men who remained on Elephant Island as 6 men set sail for the 800-mile journey across fierce sea to the Island of South Georgia.  And then three of those men who hiked across the uncharted alpine glaciers on the interior of South Georgia to reach a whaling village finally signaling their ultimate rescue.  Every man survived.

As inspirational a story as there has ever been. Perseverance in the face of hunger, thirst, fatigue, bitter cold, and the chill of continuously being soaked to the bone, sleeping on the sea of ice, or rocks, or wet beach. Sleeping in wet bag of reindeer hide the natural animal skin disintegrating into hair and gunk literally in your face.  Their discomfort knows no parallel from which humans could emerge, alive.  And Lansing has you feel every hunger pain, every moan in the night, right down to the pain you feel as frostbite takes hold of your stiff wet hands pumping water out of the boat, for which, you cannot stop, because the boat is sinking. The descriptions of the daily rigors of life required discipline, endurance, and of course resilience.  And it’s not without humor, these men could still laugh at their fate.  I laughed in the face of imminent death as one of the survivors, trudged across the slushy ice pack, sinking down to his knees, as a one-thousand-pound leopard seal, able to move much faster than he could, closed in.  Only after a fellow survivor with a rifle—liberated him from the pursuit—and earned the crew, half-a-ton of seal meat and blubber.   This is key to the telling of the story and Lansing gets it right.  Since you feel the cold, you feel the pain, you no longer get to complain if your own home feels a bit chilling in the morning…screw you.  In fact, after reading this story you never get to complain again about the discomfort of hunger, thirst, fatigue, illness ever again.  One of the survivors suffered a heart attack on Elephant Island.  He made it.  Another, survivor had his toes amputated on that same beach, he also made it. Shackleton, with Worsley providing the map, brought them all home.  This is such a Five-Star book.  With the topic of resilience training in vouge these days, I can’t help but wonder if “Endurance” should simply be required reading in high school English.  As we debate political correctness and cancel culture in our schools, perhaps we can all agree, this book has no political agenda, makes no attempt to rewrite history, contains no statements of toxic masculinity, and there isn’t even a cuss word—although I can assure you these men cussed.  Perhaps the most politically incorrect statement uttered by the men, was their evening toast, as they waited out the Antarctic winter from inside the room, midship the Endurance, which they called the Ritz.  Pulling everyone together from out of their individual berths and into this hold, so they could all be together and preserve precious resources, like coal and heating oil.  They thought of their families and their loved ones back home and they hoisted a cup of drink.  “To our wives and our girlfriends, may they never meet”.  That’s resilience in the face of death…that’s endurance…